Feet of Clay
by waterlit
Summary: It all but breaks them, the process of finding the road that leads back to redemption. Komui/Lenalee.


Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Warning: incest ahead. But don't worry, I don't write explicit scenes. Not what I consider explicit, anyway.

* * *

She clutches at the jagged edges of utopia (with furry carpets and soft hair and the slightest whiff of cologne and coffee), and her heart nosedives in her chest.

_It feels like heaven_, she thinks, and her soft hands slide up and down his sleep-drawn face. There is stubble – who said Asian men lacked facial hair? – and she feels vindicated. The soft hair, _strange that I can't see it normally_, rests lightly upon the smooth cheek.

He stirs, and in her heart, anxiety flares.

What, what if, he wakes and sees her, feel her?

Her sins are dredged out of the dark and laid bare before her, as numerous and unforgiving as the stubble upon his chin and she wishes, prays even, for a night of peace bereft of unholy longing. But the clock ticks on and the night flies by, and wishing for the unattainable is but pure folly.

The shadows weave around her amid the flickering darkness, and she unwillingly brings her hand back to her chest. She heaves and finds her breath gushing out. _Good-night, good-night, fare thee well in the night._

She glides silently out of the hollow room, and find that's she has left a bit of herself behind – maybe a fraction of her heart, maybe a slice of her soul, maybe her whole true self, but she doesn't look back. She has started on this road to purgatory, and never again will she turn her gaze to the road that looks east, to Eden, to redemption, to pity and justice and all things good.

She has crossed the line and now she has to run, panting, winded, but never stopping, from all things that will lead towards the light, that were dark in the beginning…

but are now painted gleaming bright.

And she runs, and she runs, and her footsteps run from her; they run, and they run.

Her footsteps recede in the dank corridors, dancing with the inky darkness. A thousand perhaps ago, there might have been men and women who walked along the stilted-shaded path. But now, Central governs with an iron fist, and all who stray from the set path must be burned as heretics, forever relegated to the burning fires of the dark and the deep.

Some rooms away, his eyes open like a shutter closed too long too often.

In the weepy darkness, his heart roars, and he wonders why she couldn't feel his leaping heartbeats. The door closes behind her and he sits up in bed, slight pressure still on his cheek. It is a sin to love her the way he does; he should not, can not, may not, but he does, and it churns within him like a snake turning on its head.

[[]]

When they meet again, it is morning, and on his face is a kindly smile, tinted with the right shade of concern. All his emotions are under check, and his glance is spotless as fresh linen, like the sky after a bout of teary tears.

"Lenalee, have you had breakfast?" He asks, all brotherly concern and anxious soul.

"Yes, Nii-san…" She replies, her voice lost in the mist of despair. _And it will end here…. _

"Lenalee, I – we – do you remember – our parents – I…" Komui smiles and tries again to clear the cobwebs tangled in his thoughts. He doesn't quite know how to act around Lenalee anymore.

She smiles too, uncertain, but Allen-kun appears and drags her attention away to trivial issues that beg her pardon, a thousand times over.

[[]]

Reever doesn't think to snoop at first.

It all begins with the coffee.

When Lenalee walks in with her tray one day, Reever sees Komui's eyes flash with sudden anxiety. He dismisses the observation as an empirical example of the chief's sister complex. But it happens again late one night, when he finds the two locked in each other's unending arms, half-melted into shadows under the black night sky.

(Then he thinks to snoop.)

He watches from far corners and stands behind ancient pillars, always looking out for signs of that ebony-dark hair. Sometimes he sees _him_, and sometimes he sees _her_, but they rarely appear together. He thinks himself delusional, not quite right in the head – it's the coffee overdose, really, he tells himself when the clock chimes midnight – and almost gives up with a telltale sigh.

But the winds of fate scour the quicklime and spurn the odious overtures of defecting sins.

He catches the incestuous duo late one night, under the moon's splayed hands. They are kissing, imperceptibly so, and he almost retches and gives the show away.

There Komui is, tall and imposing against the crescent moon's large face, and buried deep in his chest, under his white lab coat, are Lenalee's hands, dancing, dancing, dancing into hell on earth. Their lips work against each other, sliding, pushing, grasping, and they are woefully ignorant of the world spinning on its axis.

Reever fumbles his way back into the cold shadows and prays for deliverance from sin and misery of man's own making. But his eyes do not deceive him, and he hides stricken amidst the deepening dark.

When morning flits by, Reever marches into Komui's office, the moral aggressiveness of justice writ in his face.

"Supervisor…" And he accuses Komui of all the dastardly deeds he has committed, throwing them at the chief with remarkably deadly aim.

But Komui is intelligent. He feigns ignorance, dangles exuberance and plays the mad-scientist-card, sing-song voice rumbling in the miniature cavern, but Reever throws him to earth and fishes out the truth.

"Am I, or am I not, telling the truth?" He fixes Komui with a stern glare

…and feels vindicated in the resulting silence.

"You must end this." Reever finally says. "Central will not forgive both you and Lenalee if this is found out. And such Acts are Immoral."

Komui nods. "I will end it. I have a duty to the exorcists, and I cannot endanger Lenalee's life like that…"

When Reever leaves the room, he leaves behind a sunken Komui with his head between his arms and long fingers fiddling-twiddling anxiously. A broken Komui it is, one whose inner mechanisms of action had been torn and totally destroyed by Reever's simple words.

_I must end this. _

[[]]

The sun-king emerged from the primeval mists, shaking the whispery ashes away. He stepped into the heavens and found the moon-mother and he took her into his embrace.

From their lusty union came forth the earth god and the sky goddess. They were siblings, and lived for a good while as happy companions. But the day came when both would rue their blood ties, for they soon realised that they held a special kind of love for each other, a love that had no place in the thread that linked them by the tremulous hand of fate.

But they succumbed, in the end, to longing and desire, and consorted with each other from dawn to dusk, the sky-queen forever above the earth-god, both stitched together forever like an encircling serpent.

The sun-king was all indomitable fury and endless fire when he heard of his children's immoral acts. Striding through aether, he pushed them apart and peppered the earth's surface with trees and animals and man and oceans so that the earth and the sky could never reach each other again.

_Then and there the story ends_.

[[]]

Komui thinks that it would have been better if he had remained strong and not fallen prey to the artful designs of his own desires.

When he stirs his coffee he can see Lenalee's swirling hair in the undissolved coffee powder as it twirls in the vortex created by the spoon.

Lenalee steals into his room that night, wrapping her cold arms around him and he feels a thousand miles away from her heart of hearts. Whence had her strange desires – and oh, his too! – come?

He stirs and presses her shivering body to his chest and inhales her smell. There is the fragrance of roses sleeping under the night breeze, and the wafting aroma of cinnamon and coffee and chocolate. There is also a hint of perfume, mixed with a dash of soap, minty, sweet, and ultimately Lenalee.

He licks her.

She squirms, clearly not expecting such a reaction.

"Lenalee, Lenalee…" He breathes.

"Nii-san?"

"This will be our last time doing… such stuff."

She looks at him, and the pain in her eyes shatters his heart.

He presses his warm lips to her marble forehead, and she shivers in spite of herself. Drawing her closer, he rocks her gently on his lap and prays, wishes, for the moon to swallow them up.

"Kiss me!" Lenalee says, and arches her neck towards her brother.

"Lenalee…" and his desires take root in her sweet little mouth. He lingers in that veritable utopia, drinking deep of pale violets and champagne and the indomitable memory of home sweet home.

Fingers travel where they shouldn't, and the candle flickers as they slip off their garments and slide between the sheets. For now, they will fulfil each other, for the morning will bring separation and an eternity of emotional suppression.

When the sun creeps into sky, treading grey waters behind dark clouds, Komui opens his eyes and shakes Lenalee gently till she too opens her sleep-riddled eyes.

He holds her close to his warm chest, and feels her heartbeat with his palm.

"This is the end of all our sins." He tells her gently, reminding her of their agreement to walk back along the straight path to redemption.

"I don't … want…this to happen…" Lenalee touches his lips.

His lips crush hers again, in a stronghold that she cannot fight against, she lets his tongue take the lead, and then it ends.

He leaps out of bed and leaves her cold in his huge room, and she almost cries herself to sleep again.

[[]]

When they meet in the corridors again the next day, it's all he can do to stay calm and smile his big-brother smile.

"Lenalee… did you sleep well?"

She presses the tears back and lends him a solitary smile. "Yes, Nii-san."

When Reever passes them by, he is struck by how chillingly polite they are to each other.

And he knows for sure: _then and there the story ends._

* * *

A/N: I've finally done it! It's kind of sick and totally wrong, I know, but I just had to write this. It was fun, whatever you think (: Not that I condone incest, of course.

Right there's a little bit in the middle that's like part of a myth. I saw someone's work before (can't remember who) with a made-up myth stuck at the end of the story and thought it was pretty. Tried to replicate with my own made-up myth here (:

Uhh what else. I don't really have anything much to say about this; do you think Komui and Lenalee are a bit ooc, though? I was wondering about this. Okay that's about it hope you enjoyed this. Reviews would be appreciated (:


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